Quote

Disputing the commonsense notion that all events require the prior existence of some underlying matter or substance. There is no antecedent static cabinet.

Alfred North Whitehead

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Alfred North Whitehead
Age: 86 †
Born: 1861
Born: February 15
Died: 1947
Died: December 30
Mathematician
Philosopher
Physicist
Theologian
Writer
Ramsgate
Kent
Existence
Cabinets
Matter
Prior
Underlying
Static
Require
Antecedent
Substance
Disputing
Notion
Commonsense
Events
Cabinet

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Rationalism is an adventure in the clarification of thought.
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Symbolism is no mere idle fancy or corrupt degeneration: it is inherent in the very texture of human life.
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Order is not sufficient. What is required, is something much more complex. It is order entering upon novelty so that the massiveness of order does not degenerate into mere repetition and so that the novelty is always reflected upon a background of system.
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Ninety percent of our lives is governed by emotion. Our brains merely register and act upon what is telegraphed to them by our bodily experience. Intellect is to emotion as our clothes are to our bodies we could not very well have civilized life without clothes, but we would be in a poor way if we had only clothes without bodies.
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A science which hesitates to forget its founders is lost.
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Every really new idea looks crazy at first.
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Shakespeare wrote better poetry for not knowing too much Milton, I think, knew too much finally for the good of his poetry.
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It is impossible to meditate on time and the mystery of nature without an overwhelming emotion at the limitations of human intelligence.
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Knowledge keeps no better than fish.
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An unflinching determination to take the whole evidence into account is the only method of preservation against the fluctuating extremes of fashionable opinion.
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Every epoch has its character determined by the way its population reacts to the material events which they encounter.
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The science of pure mathematics, in its modern developments, may claim to be the most original creation of the human spirit.
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Now in creative thought common sense is a bad master. Its sole criterion for judgement is that the new ideas shall look like the old ones. In other words it can only work by suppressing originality.
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On the ostensible exactitude of certain branches of human knowledge, including mathematics. The exactness is a fake.
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The factor in human life provocative of a noble discontent is the gradual emergence of a sense of criticism, founded upon appreciation of beauty, and of intellectual distinction, and of duty.
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Knowledge shrinks as wisdom grows.
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There is a quality of life which lies always beyond the mere fact of life and when we include the quality in the fact, there is still omitted the quality of the quality.
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The main importance of Francis Bacon's influence does not lie in any peculiar theory of inductive reasoning which he happened to express, but in the revolt against second-hand information of which he was a leader.
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The race that does not value trained intelligence is doomed.
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The foundation of reverence is this perception, that the present holds within itself the complete sum of existence, backwards and forwards, that whole amplitude of time, which is eternity.
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